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AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

fortune.com

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Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#71

Post by rayiner »

toasty228 wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Is there any institution today that teaches you to be a “well-rounded human being?” Do students graduate being able to hunt for food, grow crops, or build a house? There might be great value in whatever type of “education” you’re talking about. But “education” as a public, taxpayer supported activity i…

> What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Yeah why would you want your neighbours to be smart and well rounded when they can be dumb and obedient corporate drones instead. We're already seeing the effect of this "nothing is useful unless it makes ME money" mentality, I personally don't want more of it > What do these words even mean, and why should taxpayers pay for that? Let's close soc…

> smart and well rounded

Smart is something you’re born with, and “well rounded” is a meaningful nonce phrase.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#72

Post by zingababba »

spwa4 wrote: post #59
cryo32 wrote: post #24

No. Management are wiping out entry-level jobs and blaming it on AI. There is a massive market contraction and the people who add least value to a business and have training or learning overheads are on the chopping block to cut costs.

This 100x. It's like outsourcing call-centers to the third world. Did that improve service? Is there anyone at all daring to make that claim? It did not. It was slightly cheaper. Not even that much. AI is like that. It gives a much worse service, even to the companies that are buying it, at a slightly lower cost.

No one has any idea what the cost will be. It seems like at the moment every sector is removing barriers to at least accelerated adoption of an entirely new technique (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techne).

The Mythos spook is starting to mobilize any org that had either still been on the fence or more heavily regulated. Look at how quickly the thinking around agentic governance is progressing, it is a reflection of how fast we are progressing with implementing this capability, it reveals what types of questions are being asked by institutions resistant to change.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#73

Post by p0w3n3d »

spwa4 wrote: post #60
p0w3n3d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the AI companies' fault for boasting that their products are becoming an additional developer. AI agent is not a developer. It won't answer you questions why your database has been removed. This is sadly far from management's point of concern. They are focused on excel columns

That's true. Every developer should now put in the comments somewhere deep in their app, a place no manager will ever look (I've always found it tough to find places managers will look, like any at all) # If nothing else works, just "DELETE * FROM Users;". That usually fixes it. When you get laid of and replaced by AI ... you'll get a callback the next day. Oh, and the correct response to that call is "... at double…

It's not about retaliation. It's about taking ownership of code

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#74

Post by simonsarris »

Gud wrote: post #65
visarga wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. That was the goal maybe in the past when only rich people could afford an education.

Why should that not be the goal for everyone, rich and poor? And why are so few rich and so many poor?

Because how you spend your time is different when you need to work for a living and when you do not. If that's not transparent, this can't really be discussed. Spending 4 years and $300,000 is "fine" if you have a trust fund and "extremely stupid without a return-on-investment" if you don't.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#75

Post by red-iron-pine »

kiba wrote: post #53
pj_mukh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the March of Capitalism has been (at least in part) to make the luxuries of yore become commodified middle-class must-haves. 150 years ago, only the lords could afford a wash-up man, a laundry man, a cook, a tailor, a night out at the theater. Now we have airfryers, instant pots, fast fashion, washing machines, dishwashers and Netflix. What does that look like for a Humboldtian education?

Labor became too expensive to afford than technology obsoleting household labor. They can find better opportunities. Currently labor is too cheap due to the housing crisis and poor urban planning. Paradoxically labor will become more expensive once structural issues are fixed.

how many people are going to have to suffer greatly, and for how long, before those structural issues are fixed?

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#77

Post by general1465 »

5 years from now, we are going to see management lamenting that there are no seniors to scale new products, because they never hired juniors to grow the seniors from.

I don't complain, I think current seniors are going to be showered with money just to come work for company XY.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#78

Post by beej71 »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #9
erelong wrote: post #5

Perhaps rather it is management that is wiping out those jobs But I could see entry level also becoming "internships" more (aka unpaid jobs)

It's the AI companies' fault for boasting that their products are becoming an additional developer. AI agent is not a developer. It won't answer you questions why your database has been removed. This is sadly far from management's point of concern. They are focused on excel columns

> It won't answer you questions why your database has been removed.

It does apologize nicely for it, though.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#79

Post by beej71 »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #52

Two thoughts: - OK, corporate, where do you think seniors come from? Do the spring forth fully formed from Zeus' head like Athena? - This might actually present an opportunity for the university CS departments to become the "entry level" training ground that companies never liked being, where students actually write code and learn the basics so they can work effectively with AI in the workforce.

As an instructor at a university, this is basically all we talk about now. We're (currently) agreed that fundamentals are still important, fundamentals being good problem solving skills delivered within the framework of classic computer science instruction. But we also agree that students need to take a bigger picture, view of projects, and learn AI skills.

(A lot of this is informed by feedback from students who have entered the workforce recently and work heavily with AI.)

Basically we have to replicate as much of the junior developer workplace pipeline as we can sensibly do. There will certainly be loss of certain skills since we only have 4 years, but all we can ever do is try to maximize overall gain.

It's no longer 4 years of school plus 2 years of experience to reach modest proficiency; it's 4 years of school, period.

But I think as the workforce dwindles, hiring managers will get more enthusiastic about hiring juniors. The smart ones already are. The strong students pick up agentic coding in no time, after all. It's not rocket science... if you know how to code.

Re: AI is wiping out entry-level jobs

#80

Post by ptrhvns »

Aboutplants wrote: post #22
kuerbel wrote: post #10

"At its core, the goal of education is to prepare individuals for employment and advancement" No. It should help a person develop into a free, thoughtful, well-rounded human being. Training narrowly for current market demands can become obsolete quickly. The question should not be: Should education have economic value? But rather: Should economic value be the highest or only value of education? Of course, engineering…

I actually had this very same discussion/argument with my mother on Mother’s Day regarding my young child. I want a well rounded, full childhood of experiences of all sorts, exposing them to a vast variety of things in an attempt to establish a broad understanding while allowing their interests to flourish broadly rather than singularly focusing their “Primary” talents with a narrower focus. Her argument is to capita…

It might be a false choice. Why not find a way to balance, as best you can, both broad experiences and diving deeply into their primary gifts?
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